Sheet metal and other workpieces can be fabricated into a wide range of useful products. To that end, the fabrication (i.e., manufacturing) processes commonly involve making various bends and/or forming holes in the sheet metal and other workpieces. The types of equipment generally used in such processes include turret presses and other industrial presses (such as single-station presses), Trumpf style machine tools and other rail type systems, press brakes, sheet feed systems, coil feed systems, and other types of fabrication equipment adapted for punching or pressing sheet materials.
Concerning press brakes, they are equipped with a lower table and an upper table, and are commonly used for deforming metal workpieces. One of the tables (typically the upper table) is configured to be vertically movable toward the other table. To that end, forming tools are mounted to the tables so that when one table is brought toward the other, a workpiece positioned there between can be bent into an appropriate shape. Typically, the upper table includes a male forming tool (a punch) having a bottom workpiece-deforming surface (such as a V-shaped surface), and the bottom table has an appropriately-shaped female tool (a die) having an upper surface vertically aligned with the workpiece-deforming surface of the male tool.
As is known, the forming tools used with press brakes must be carefully positioned on the press tables in order to bend the workpiece to precise specifications. To aid the operator in this regard, certain press brakes have been fabricated with positioning systems. Such positioning systems, in many cases, are provided on a front side of the press brake, and span a considerable length of the tables of the press brake. The positioning systems have been known to utilize rulers or scales (e.g., which can be illuminated from behind) or light-emitting diode (LED) mechanisms, such an LED strip. For example, in the case of LED strips, they are typically contained within an enclosure mounted on the press brake, wherein such strip spans an extent of the enclosure and is visible through a clear substrate (such as glass or plastic) on a front side of the enclosure.
In some conventional processes, deforming parameters for a press brake operation are generally entered into a computer console that is hard wired to the press brake. For press brakes having a positioning system as described above, the console is similarly wired thereto. As such, once a machine operation is entered into the press brake console, the positioning system is used to illuminate corresponding segments (of the LED strip or ruler/scale) to indicate requisite mounting positions (e.g., particular locations along a length of the table) for forming tools on the press brake.
While the above-described positioning systems and other conventional types have been of use for positioning forming tools on press brakes, the designs of such systems have limited their use and further functionality. The present invention addresses these and other limitations.